Saturday, January 05, 2013

First Bento of 2013

Jajaaaahn! Here is the first bento of the year of the snake! Oh no. It does not contain any snake meat, of course haha! One of my favorite bento dishes... pork tariyaki. I slightly coated pork thins with potato starch and pan fried it. And then added shoyu-koji, brown sugar and a bit of water. Then dressed it well. The rest of the bento... Half a cheese omelet and kamaboko twists. You know what, the prices of kamaboko go up at the end of every year, but yesterday they turned a lot cheaper at the super market! Of course I grabbed one. Kamaboko is one of New-Yearly foods.





This is today's sweet snack for us, oshiruko. Toasted mochi in sweet azuki bean soup. It's comforting and perfect on a cold day like today.


Thursday, January 03, 2013

Hello 2013

HAPPY MERRY NEW YEAR!!!

How have you been?? I've almost forgotten how to blog haha! I am sure all those who are reading this post right now are at least doing well. And I sure hope that 2013 will be an amazing year for y'all and me! Actually I've had a hard time getting enough time for blogging lately, working on some projects, which are totally private and domestic though. Once things settle down I will be able to write a post regularly like before.


These are bentos I made last year. As I say this time of each year, my bentos will be getting even more simple and effortless because I like simple bentos. And maybe because I'm getting even lazier lol! Though, I want to make only yummy bentos.


Imo-ten (sweet potato tempra) with matcha salt, and quick terini chicken.



Sanma kabayaki (kind of a teriyaki fish) and scallop fry.



Some omusubi, shiokoji egg halves and a persimmon cup.



Om-yaki-spa! Spaghetti with yakisoba sauce, topped with an omelet.



In the meantime, this plate is our New Year dinner this year. Since I don't really like Japanese traditional New Year's foods other than ozouni (mochi soup), I was not going to prepare osechi. They are a bit too sweet for me. Plus if you make all the foods from scratch yourself, that would take tons of time. But Yuppi decided to make some that she really wanted to eat. At first, she was supposed to make them and I was going to help her if requested, but for some reason, I ended up doing most of them lol! It didn't take much time though. All the osechi foods have a meaning each, but I won't write it here because I don't know much about them, heehee. Wishing family and oneself happiness, good health and prosperity in the upcoming year anyway. I adapted those traditional recipes to my taste. What I made for the dinner are datemaki egg (cheat), fried amaebi (tiny shrimps), tazukuri (crunchy, shoyu-glazed tiny little fishes), daikon and carrot salad (the combo of white and orange/pink/red is thought of as a festive color) with whole grain mustard dressing, and chicken karaage (which doesn't count as an osechi). To jazz it up, I made little roses using the shiokoji salmon I'd made earlier. It turned out that Yuppi only made milk butter kinton (mashed sweet patato) haha!






I'm sorry, I haven't been able to reply in a timely fashion to everybody's comments. I'm soon going to write back.

Hoping y'all are having (had) wonderful holidays!